Sakamoto first worked with Hosono as a member of his live band in 1976, while Yukihiro Takahashi recruited Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording in 1977 following the split of the Sadistic Mika Band. Hosono invited both to work on his exotica-flavoured album Paraiso, which included electronic songs produced using various electronic equipment. The band was named "Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band" as a satire of Japan's obsession with black magic at the time,[16] and in late 1977 they began recording Paraiso, which was released in 1978.[17] The three worked together again for the 1978 album Pacific, which included an early version of the song "Cosmic Surfin".[18] Hosono and Sakamoto also worked together alongside Hideki Matsutake in early 1978 for Hosono's experimental "electro-exotica" fusion album Cochin Moon, which fused electronic music with Indian music, including an early "synth raga" song "Hum Ghar Sajan".[19] The same year, Sakamoto released his own solo album, The Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, experimenting with a similar fusion between electronic music and traditional Japanese music in early 1978. Hosono also contributed to one of Sakamoto's songs, "Thousand Knives", in the album.[20]Thousand Knives was also notable for its early use of the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 Microcomposermusic sequencer, with Matsutake as its music programmer for the album.[21][22]

While Sakamoto was working on Thousand Knives, Hosono began formulating the idea of an instrumental disco band which could have the potential to reach success in non-Japanese-language territories, and invited Tasuo Hayashi of Tin Pan Alley and Hiroshi Sato of Uncle Buck as participants, but they declined.[22] Hosono, Sakamoto and Takahashi eventually collaborated again to form the Yellow Magic Orchestra and they began recording their self-titled album at a Shibaura studio in July 1978.[23] The band was initially conceived as a one-off studio project by Hosono, the other two members being recruited session musicians—the idea was to produce an album fusing orientalist exotica with modern electronics, as a subversion of Orientalism and exoticization.[citation needed]

The band's 1978 self-titled album Yellow Magic Orchestra was successful and the studio project grew into a fully fledged touring band and career for its three members. The album featured the use of computer technology (along with synthesizers) which, according to Billboard, allowed the group to create a new sound that was not possible until then.[24] Following the release of the album Yellow Magic Orchestra, a live date at the Roppongi Pit Inn was seen by executives of A&M Records of the USA who were in the process of setting up a partnership deal with Alfa Records. This led to the YMO being offered an international deal, at which point (early 1979) the three members decided the group would be given priority over their solo careers. The most popular international hit from the album was "Firecracker", which would be released as a single the following year and again as "Computer Game", which became a success in the United States and Europe.[citation needed]

Following an advertising deal with Fuji Cassette, the group sparked a boom in the popularity of electronic pop music, called "technopop" in Japan,[16][6] where they had an effect similar to that of the Beatles and Merseybeat in 1960s Britain.[16] For some time, YMO was the most popular band in Japan.[16] Successful solo act Akiko Yano (later married to Sakamoto) joined the band for its live performances in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but did not participate in the studio recordings. On the other hand, the YMO trio contributed to her own albums and became part of her live band, during these same years.[citation needed] Legendary English guitarist Bill Nelson, who had disbanded Be-Bop Deluxe and Red Noise to more recently explore Electropop himself, likewise played on YMO's Naughty Boys (1983), its non-vocals variant Naughty Boys Instrumental (1984) and subsequent solo Yukihiro Takahashi projects, before featuring the latter on two of Nelson's own UK based releases.

Making abundant use of new synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, drum machines, computers and digital recording technology as it became available, as well as utilizing cyberpunk-ish lyrics sung mostly in English, they extended their popularity and influence beyond Japan.[2][6][7]

Their second album Solid State Survivor went on to sell over 2 million records worldwide.[30] By 1980, YMO had become the most popular group in Japan, where they were performing to sold out crowds. Their first live album Public Pressure set a record in Japan, topping the charts and selling 250,000 copies within two weeks, while their next studio album X∞Multiplies had 200,000 pre-orders before release.[6] The same year, their albums Solid State Survivor and X∞Multiplies held the top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks, making YMO the only band in Japanese chart history to achieve this feat.[31]

The 1980 song "Multiplies" was an early experiment in electronic ska.[32]X∞Multiplies was followed up with the 1981 album BGM. "Rap Phenomena" from the album was an early attempt at electronic rap.[33]

They also had similar success abroad, performing to sold-out crowds during tours in the United States and Europe.[6] The single "Computer Game" had sold 400,000 copies in the United States[6] and reached No. 17 in the UK Charts. The group also performed "Firecracker" and "Tighten Up" live on the Soul Train television show. At around the same time, the 1980 song "Riot in Lagos" by YMO member Sakamoto pioneered the beats and sounds of electro music.[4][34] The band was particularly popular with the emerging hip hop community, which appreciated the group's electronic sounds, and in the Bronx where "Firecracker" was a success and sampled in the famous Death Mix (1983) by Afrika Bambaataa.[4][35] Meanwhile, in Japan, YMO remained the best-selling music act there up until 1982.[36]

The band had paused their group activities by 1984. After the release of their musical motion picture Propaganda, the three members had returned to their solo careers. They were careful to avoid saying they had "split up", preferring to use the Japanese phrase meaning "spreading out" (散開,sankai), and the trio continued to play on each other's recordings and made guest appearances at live shows. Takahashi, in particular, would play the band's material in his concerts. Meanwhile, Sakamoto would gain international success for his work as a solo artist, actor, and film composer,[37] winning Grammy, Oscar and Golden Globe awards.[29]

Yellow Magic Orchestra released one-off reunion album, Technodon, and credited it to 'NOT YMO' (YMO crossed out with a calligraphy X) or YMO in 1993.[citation needed] Instead of traditional vocals, about half of it features field audio recordings and samples of authors and scientists reading their work.[citation needed] During their brief reunion in the early 1990s, they continued to experiment with new styles of electronic music, playing an instrumental role in the techno and acid house movements of the era.[38]

The early 2000s saw Hosono and Takahashi reunited in a project called Sketch Show. On a number of occasions Ryuichi Sakamoto has joined in on Sketch Show performances and recording sessions. He later proposed they rename the group Human Audio Sponge when he participates. Barcelona performance at Sonar festival and Wild Sketch Show DVDs chronicle these reunions, and include a tongue-in-cheek Japanese text-only history of the group that spans to 2036.

The band have reunited in 2007 for an advertising campaign for Kirin Lager which lampooned their longevity and charted No.1 on various Japanese digital download charts (including iTunes Store chart) with the song "Rydeen 79/07", released on Sakamoto's new label commmons. Recently performing live as Human Audio Sponge; Hosono, Sakamoto and Takahashi did a live performance together as Yellow Magic Orchestra for the Live Earth, Kyoto event on July 7, 2007, which raised money and awareness of a "climate in crisis".

In August 2007, the band once again reformed, taking the name HASYMO or HAS/YMO, combining the names of Human Audio Sponge and Yellow Magic Orchestra. Their first single under this name, "Rescue", was written for the film Appleseed EX Machina. They released a new two song single titled "The City of Light/Tokyo Town Pages" on August 6, 2008. HASYMO played two live concerts in Europe in the summer of 2008, one at the Royal Festival Hall, London on June 15, as part of the Meltdown festival of music curated by Massive Attack and another in Gijón, Spain on the 19th. Although the primary YMO members (Yukihiro Takahashi, Haruomi Hosono, and Ryuichi Sakamoto) are effectively known as HASYMO and played both these concerts, these concerts were billed simply as "YMO" but featured only 4 YMO songs in each concert while the rest of the concert featured Sketch Show, HASYMO music and member's solo works.

In August 2009, the band played the World Happiness festival in Japan, featuring many Japanese artists. The band closed the night, and confirmed that "Yellow Magic Orchestra" is their official name, dropping the HASYMO title. They opened with a cover of "Hello, Goodbye" and performed old YMO songs along with their newer songs.[39]

In August 2010, YMO once again closed their World Happiness festival. They added classic songs from their back catalog into their set list. They also covered "Hello, Goodbye" and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)".[40] In January 2011, KCRW announced for their World Festival concert series that Yellow Magic Orchestra will perform at the Hollywood Bowl on June 26, 2011.[41] Not long after, a concert for June 27, 2011 at The Warfield was added.[42] It was announced in February that YMO will perform at the Fuji Rock festival in July and the World Happiness festival 2011 on August 7 where they will debut new songs.

In 2012, Sakamoto helped organize the No Nukes 2012 festival held in the Makuhari Messe hall in Chiba, Japan on July 7 and 8, 2012.[43] Among the many artists performing, Kraftwerk closed the July 7th concert, with YMO performing on both days, closing the July 8th concert.[44] YMO also headlined their World Happiness festival on August 12, 2012.[45]

On June 23, 2018, Hosono played his debut UK solo concert at the Barbican Centre in London; Takahashi and Sakamoto joined him on stage to perform "Absolute Ego Dance".

While their contemporaries in Düsseldorf, and later Detroit, were using synthesizer technology to create bleak dystopian music, YMO introduced a more "joyous and liberating" approach to electronic music. According to Sakamoto, they were "tired" of Japanese musicians imitating Western and American music at the time and so they wanted to "make something very original from Japan."[46] Kraftwerk was particularly an influence on Sakamoto, who heard the band in the mid-1970s and later introduced them to his fellow band members.[46] They were impressed with Kraftwerk's "very formalized" style but wanted to avoid imitating their "very German" approach. He described Kraftwerk's music as "theoretical, very focused, simple and minimal and strong".[47] Their alternative template for electronic pop was less minimalistic, made more varying use of synthesizer lines, introduced "fun-loving and breezy" sounds,[48] and placed a strong emphasis on melody[46] in contrast to Kraftwerk's statuesque "robot pop".[49]

They were also the very first band to utilize the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, one of the first and most influential programmable drum machines, as soon as it was released in 1980.[63] While the machine was initially unsuccessful due to its lack of digital sampling that the rival Linn LM-1 offered, the TR-808 featured various unique artificial percussion sounds,[63] including a deep bass kick drum,[64][65] "tinny handclap sounds",[65] "the ticky snare, the tishy hi-hats (open and closed)", and "the spacey cowbell",[63] which YMO utilized and demonstrated in their music, as early as its year of release in 1980, paving the way for the TR-808's mainstream popularity several years later,[63][64] after which it would be used for more hit records than any other drum machine[66] and continue to be widely used through to the present day.[63]

At the time, Billboard noted that the use of such computer-based technology in conjunction with synthesizers allowed YMO to create new sounds that were not possible until then.[24]Yellow Magic Orchestra was also the first computer-themed music album, coming before Kraftwerk's Computer World (1981) by several years.[67] As a result of such innovations, YMO were credited at the time for having "ushered in the age of the computer programmer as rock star."[6]

YMO were pioneers of synthpop, a genre whose emergence at the start of the 1980s some have argued was the most significant development in melodic pop music since the Sixties and the Beatles. In 1993, Johnny Black of Hi-Fi News, in a review for the record Hi-Tech/No Crime, described YMO as "the most adventurous and influential electro-techno-dance technicians the world has produced" and further argued that "without them (and Kraftwerk) today's music would still sound like yesterday's music."[5] In 2001, Jason Ankeny of the Allmusic Guide to Electronica described YMO as "a seminal influence on contemporary electronic music – hugely popular both at home and abroad" and placed them "second only to Kraftwerk as innovators of today's electronic culture."[77]

The band was popular with the emerging hip hop community, which appreciated the group's new electronic sounds, and in the Bronx where "Firecracker" was a success and sampled in the famous Death Mix by Afrika Bambaataa.[4][35] According to The Guardian, they "may have just invented hip-hop"; the hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa credited the band as an inspiration and once remarked that YMO invented hip hop music (in a half-joking manner).[16] Afrika Bambaataa's influential song "Planet Rock" was partly inspired by YMO.[89][90] The "terse videogame-funk" sounds of YMO's "Computer Game" would have a strong influence on the emerging electro and hip hop genres.[11] Sakamoto's "Riot in Lagos" was cited by Kurtis Mantronik as a major influence on his early electro hip hop group Mantronix;[91] he included both "Computer Game" and "Riot in Lagos" in his compilation album That's My Beat (2002) which consists of the songs that influenced his early career.[92] The song was also later included in Playgroup's compilation albumKings of Electro (2007), alongside later electro classics such as Hashim's "Al-Nafyish" (1983).[93] The 1980 release of "Riot in Lagos" was also listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of the 50 key events in the history of dance music.[94]

The band has also been very influential in its homeland Japan, where they had become the most popular group during the late 1970s and 1980s.[16] Their albums Solid State Survivor and X∞Multiplies held the top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks in 1980, making YMO the only band in Japanese chart history to achieve this feat.[31] Young fans of their music during this period became known as the "YMO Generation" (YMO世代,YMO Sedai).[97] The band significantly affected Japanese pop music, which started becoming increasingly dominated by electronic and computer music due to YMO's influence.[50] YMO were one of the most important acts in Japan's "New Music" movement and paved the way for the emergence of contemporary J-pop in the 1980s.[98] They also inspired early ambient techno artists such as Tetsu Inoue,[99] and the classical music composer Joe Hisaishi.[100]